Bulletin Board: Strengthen

Topics: Pandemic Leadership, Equity and Diversity, Principal Leadership

Identify Biases to Grow as a Leader

The NAESP National Task Force on Race and Equity has been busy developing tools you can use to grow as a school leader by learning to identify your biases and overcome them. One tool—a customized Implicit Association test created with Project Implicit—gave members an opportunity to take a survey that looks at implicit bias.
Some preliminary takeaways from respondents who took the survey show:

  • The highest percentage of respondents (41.6 percent) feel “somewhat prepared” to lead a school culture that affirms students from different racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.
  • The highest percentage of respondents (45.6 percent) feel “somewhat prepared” to implement anti-racist practices in their school.
  • An overwhelming percentage of respondents (71.7 percent) indicated their school’s curriculum places a “minor emphasis” on the historical contributions of individuals of color.
  • A high percentage of respondents (67.6 percent) said their school’s curriculum places a “minor emphasis” on the historical contributions of immigrants.
  • The highest percentage of respondents (45.8 percent) said they receive “some” implicit bias training/professional development in an average school year, but 34.7 percent received no such training.
  • The highest percentage of respondents (63.4 percent) feel “somewhat” equipped to support their teachers and staff in providing implicit bias training.

Through this survey and other projects in the works, NAESP will shape its professional development and resources to strengthen you as a leader and the profession at large.

NAESP Principal Podcast

Dr. Rachael George and Adam Welcome have teamed up to bring you the NAESP Principal Podcast. A new project of the NAESP Center for Innovative Leadership (CIL), the podcast hosts—both CIL fellows—will discuss real issues in principal leadership and innovative ways to tackle them. Developed for leaders in education from preschool through eighth grade, these high-energy chats will help you and your students, faculty, staff, and school be better prepared to succeed.

Follow/Subscribe:
Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Audible

Leaders We Need Now

In 2020, principals were called upon to lead in a way they never have before. The COVID-19 pandemic saw nearly two-thirds of public schools in the United States transition between online, hybrid, and in-person learning. Events highlighting social injustice coupled with the pandemic put existing inequities into stark relief and renewed school leaders’ social justice efforts.

NAESP and the American Institutes for Research have launched “The Leaders We Need Now” study to provide principals and other leaders with information about how principals’ work has changed—and must continue to change in 2021 and beyond. The study addresses the following key questions:

  • How has principals’ work with teachers, students, and community members changed?
  • What changes to principals’ work will be permanent, and which will be temporary?
  • How have principals’ priorities changed in the past six months, if at all?
  • What are the major challenges or roadblocks facing schools in 2021?

The Joyce Foundation is funding the project to provide actionable information to principals, policymakers, and researchers to inform leadership practices beyond the health crisis and support principal professional development and preparation in the future. The project will release several briefs this spring and summer.

Happy Birthday, NAESP App!

Have you checked out the NAESP App yet? Now a year old, the app has been helping members stay connected to NAESP resources easily through their iOS or Android phones and tablets. With more than 600 users and growing, the app offers all of the great benefits NAESP has to offer, with a few app exclusives mixed in. Download it today from the App Store or Google Play.

For Print